


the only light i ever saw

by tosca1390



Category: Bedwyn Saga - Mary Balogh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 07:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Two weeks into her residency at Lindsey Hall, with summer on the approach, she comes in from her morning walk among the hills of the estate to find the maid with a note from her husband to join him in his library. It feels rather like a summons. He is still the Duke of Bewcastle, but he is also Wulfric, her husband, and a man she loves quite dearly. She wonders which hand wrote this note.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the only light i ever saw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spyglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/gifts), [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts), [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> Prompt: hideaway
> 
> I cannot write a PWP for the life of me. #whoops

*

 

Lindsey Hall is enormous. 

It takes Christine days to fully feel comfortable in her navigation of the vast house. The sprawling estates and gardens are easy enough; she has a great love of nature, of the outdoors, and the time spent outside during her Easter visit was quite enough to imprint its beauties and charms on her memory. The manor is another story; there are just so many _rooms_. And she is the mistress of them all, with their management and care (and those of the servants) in her hands. Christine has never shied away from responsibility, and she does not do so now. 

Still, it is a rather large house. She’s quite adrift at first. But she is a woman who thrives on challenges, as her odd courtship with Wulfric demonstrated. 

Two weeks into her residency at Lindsey Hall, with summer on the approach, she comes in from her morning walk among the hills of the estate to find the maid with a note from her husband to join him in his library. Christine sweeps off her bonnet and pelisse and hands them to the maid with a smile and a thank you, and frowns at the note. It feels rather like a summons. He is still the Duke of Bewcastle, but he is also Wulfric, her husband, and a man she loves quite dearly. She wonders which hand wrote this note. 

She goes into the library without knocking. Pretense is absurd between married peoples; she decided that long ago, after the mess of her first marriage to Oscar. She told Wulfric that weeks ago, during the wedding planning, and he had nearly laughed once more. She thinks it will be her constant goal to make him laugh; she doesn’t mind in the least. 

“Christine,” he says, sitting behind his desk. The shelf-lined walls are flush with books, the floor a deep dark wood under her shoes. His voice is low, even. She shivers with it. 

“Have I been summoned, husband?” she asks with a laugh, planting her hands on her hips. 

“Indeed, in a sense,” he says, those slate eyes gleaming at her. 

“Whatever for?” she asks, taking a seat opposite him. He is so damnably formal in this space, she thinks. A hideaway in the walls of his own home. If the dovecote is for Wulfric Bedwyn, then the library is the hollow home to the Duke of Bewcastle. 

She wonders if she fits in here as well as she does the other. 

His mouth curls faintly at the corners. “I am attempting to plan our summer travels among our estates and families, and would like your input.”

“Oh,” she says, her chest strangely tight. She does so like it when he speaks of them as _we_ or an _us_. He has taken so well to partnership with her. “I am quite sure wherever you’re needed – “

“I am needed everywhere,” he says quietly, in that odd tone of his. She thinks she would do anything he asked if he spoke to her in that soft, dangerous voice for long enough. It wouldn’t do for him to know that, she supposes. 

Or, perhaps it would. 

“But you have yet to experience all the varied ups and downs of a Bedwyn summer, and therefore your opinion is most necessary to my planning,” he continues, flicking his gaze from her back to his desk. The sunlight creeps in through the partly-drawn drapes, gleaming against his dark hair. 

“I would like to see Freyja,” she says after a long moment of admiring him surreptitiously. “And I hear Cornwall is lovely this time of year. I do suppose it would be nearly impossible to see all of your siblings, seeing as how you have an army of them.”

There is mirth in his eyes as he glances at her. She lets her smile sparkle and speak for itself. 

“Have you read all of these books?” she asks after another comfortable stretch of silence, which she used to glances around the library, satisfying her curiosity. Out of the many rooms in the house, she has been in this one the least; indeed, except for the night of Justin’s departure (a hideous memory), she hasn’t been in here at all. 

“No,” he murmurs, head bent over his desk. 

“Do you plan on reading all of these books?” she asks lightly. 

He glances at her, hand twitching as it lays on his desktop. She wonders how difficult it is for him to resist the urge to reach for his quizzing glass. 

One of these days, she really ought to hide all of them. Just to see his expression. Enjoyment does not seep from life at the age of thirty, after all. They have plenty of time to enjoy themselves, for years to come. 

“Between my responsibilities as duke and my responsibilities to you, wife, completing a reading inventory of these books is rather low on my list,” he says at last, eyes moving over the soft blue muslin of her day dress. 

Christine smiles. Oh, she can make her mark in here, yet. 

“I do like this room,” she says, rising. Perhaps she is not a natural coquette, but she does know how to flirt with her own husband. Light and innocence has nothing to do with what she imagines for them here and now. “It very much suits you.”

“As the dovecote does?” he asks. He unabashedly watches her as she strolls from the desk to the far book-lined wall, the sunlight just catching her in its slats.

“Differently,” she says, glancing at him over her shoulder. She looks then to the books in front of her, running her fingertips along the calfskin and leather spines. “A different sort of hideaway.”

“If you like this library, I will have to show you mine at Bedwyn House in London,” he says in that faintly superior, bored tone of his. She doesn’t mind it. She knows he uses it as a mask, to assert control over himself and his reactions.

Slowly, she’s teaching him that he does not necessarily have to do that around her. But old habits are hard to break. 

“This library suits me just fine,” she says, shifting her way slowly along the shelves. “Perhaps sometimes, I can sit here with you, and make headway on these shelves in your stead.”

“It is your home too, Christine. You may go wherever you wish.”

She looks back at him, gaze steady even as her throat warms with a flush. “But would you mind it? If I were in the Duke of Bewcastle’s space?”

She speaks as if there is a difference between the man in the dovecote and the man watching her from behind a large, dark-wood desk surrounded by the trappings of responsibility and aristocracy. She knows they are one and the same. But the Wulfric here in this library has different limits than the Wulfric of the dovecote, and she does not want to overstep in either. It’s a careful balance, being the man he must be and is. She would not disturb that for the world. 

He rises then, pushing back from his desk and walking towards her, his boots clicking on the hardwood floor. She leans back against the bookshelves and watches him, a small smile on her lips. Nothing has shifted from his face, the haughty demeanor of the Duke of Bewcastle set in firm lines. But she sees the affection and love in his eyes, and that is all she needs. 

“I want you everywhere,” he says, taking her hand in both of his and bringing it to his mouth. “In every room. In any space you so desire.”

His tongue touches her knuckles and she shivers as she laughs. “You really are charming when you decide to be,” she says. 

Wulfric, raising an eyebrow, steps closer to her, until she is flush to the shelves and his chest presses against hers. “Am I?”

“I imagine you only decide to do so when it is in your best interests. Or when your wife is near.”

“You do seem to think you know me through and through, Christine,” he says, cupping her face in his hands. “I suppose you are right.”

“Might I induce you to be charming just a little while longer?” she teases.

In answer, he bows his head and kisses her, his mouth opening warm and wet over hers. His tongue slides along her lips and she parts them with a sigh, her hands finding their ways into fists at the front of his navy-blue waistcoat. His fingers slip through her short curls and skim along the length of her sides, wrinkling the muslin as he cups her waist and pulls her hips against his. 

“This will make the tenth room we have made love in in this house?” she asks breathlessly, as his mouth slips wet and eager over the line of her jaw and the curve of her neck. She spreads her hands between his waistcoat and his linen shirt, stroking the hard warmth of his chest through the fabric. 

He cups her breast through her dress with a practiced, firm hand. His thumb rubs and circles at her taut nipple through the thin muslin. “Are you appalled at our lack of decency?” he asks in a low, heavy voice. 

She laughs again, the sound sinking into a moan as he sucks at the pulse in her throat. “Impressed by our determination to make it impossible to walk into any room and not be immediately reminded of pleasant memories. I daresay nowhere is safe, if your library hideaway is not.”

A growl rumbles through his chest, the reverberation causing shudders down her spine. “I do not want to be safe from you, Christine,” he murmurs, the hand not occupied at her breast sliding over her thigh, gathering handfuls of muslin. Warm summer air slips and curls its way around her bare legs as he pulls her skirt up to her waist. 

“A good thing you married me, then,” she says, her heart close to bursting with fullness. 

He lifts his face from her neck, revealing the rare half-smile that changes his face, lights up those steely eyes. “I am thankful for it every day of my life,” he says, all seriousness. 

Oh, how she loves him. Damnable man. She leans in and kisses him, shutting her eyes and sighing. Her hands slide into the thick dark hair at his nape, holding him close as he palms her thigh, inching her up against him; she is all but writhing against his erection, as he takes her by the waist and lifts her weight up against him and the wall of shelves. 

“Oh – “ she breathes, hooking her thighs around his hips and holding on. A hand reaches back to grasp for purchase along the edges of the shelves. She likes the press of the wood into her back, cool and unyielding where Wulfric is all warm giving flesh at her front. Her knuckles turn white as his hand slips between her thighs and cups her sex, teases her open and drags his fingers through the damp curls there before touching her. “Oh, Wulfric – “

Leaning in, he kisses at the corner of her mouth, the line of her jaw. “Beautiful,” he whispers, voice shuddering and low. It sounds as if it is ripped from deep within. His breathing is ragged and warm against her skin. “Christine – “

He slips two fingers inside of her, rubbing her slick flesh, and she shudders, arching her spine and her hips into the touch. The hand not clinging to the edge of a bookshelf digs itself into his hair and tugs. A moan rolls itself out from his chest and she sighs, breathless as pleasure shudders through her. Her thighs tighten around his hips, her curls sticking to her throat and cheek with a light sheen of sweat. 

“Please,” she murmurs, desire cresting within her as his thumb alights at her clit, rubbing. His mouth drags along her collarbones, the exposed swell of her breast. “Wulfric – “

Groaning her name, he lifts his head and kisses her mouth once, swift and hot. His eyes gleam, focused entirely on her. 

“Don’t move,” he murmurs, voice thick. His hand disappears from between her thighs and she almost sobs with the momentary loss. Skin flushed, an ache unsatisfied, she presses back against the bookshelves as she hears him curse at the buttons on his breeches. 

“I’ve never seen you so discomposed,” she teases through the haze of her want, her voice achingly low. 

He levels an even stare at her, his hand retuning to between her thighs. The other hand cups the back of her head, bringing her mouth close to his. 

“I love you,” he says, kissing her at the edge of her mouth, the line of her cheek. She softens and leans into him, moans long and slow as he slides into her. Her thighs clench at his waist and draw him in, her hips rocking off of the hard shelves behind her to move with his. He soothes his fingers through her hair and down the nape of her neck as he moves in her, pressing her back against the shelves. There are his fingers at her clit and she buries her face in the taut line of his neck, crying out. She kisses the bare line of his neck and moans, her nails digging into the wood behind her. 

When she comes, she exhales on a ragged moan of his name, sinks her teeth into the muscle of his throat. She is soft, putty in his hands, and he shudders around her, growling her name into her hair as he comes. A light film of sweat covers her, and she is rumpled beyond repairs, and she is certain her back will ache come morning. She can’t seem to find the effort to care. 

Soon, he buttons his trousers and carries her back over to his desk, sits with her right in his lap. Muscles quivering, she reaches up to smooth his hair where it has been ravaged by her grip, touches the red mark of her teeth at his neck. 

“Goodness,” she says.

“Indeed,” he replies, that low even tone returned to his voice even as his face remains flushed.

“If only I too had a hideaway you could invade at will,” she teases, smoothing her hopelessly wrinkled skirts and linking an arm about his neck. 

Smiling that slight curve of his, he runs his fingers through her hair. “Ah, but you see, wife – what’s mine is yours. They are not just mine anymore.”

She smiles brightly, cups her palm to the line of his jaw. “I suppose you’re correct.”

“And,” he adds loftily, “when we visit my siblings’ estates, there are many places in which to invade at our leisure. So to speak.”

“It would be embarrassing if they should come upon us,” she says, though she rather likes the idea of sneaking around everywhere with Wulfric. 

He shrugs, that easy aristocratic motion he must have been born with. “I have walked in on them all a time or two. There are debts to be settled.”

She leans in and kisses him lightly. “You are utterly masterful in your planning. I do love you for it.”

His arm sits snugly about her waist. “The feeling, wife, is entirely mutual.”

*


End file.
